King County: Living up to a king

With its new logo honoring the towering U.S. figure, MLK County (the entity formerly known as King) is beginning to look like itself.

It's great that Martin Luther King Jr. County, though officially called King County by the state, is named for a Nobel Peace Prize winner. We are glad that MLK County, on a unanimous vote of its council, is finally getting rid of the utterly odd symbol of an imperial crown and replacing it with the very face of peaceful, democratic, compassionate citizenship.

Is there any other U.S. combination of a county and its largest city with a more diverse, inspiring pair of logos? If so, we don't know. The King logo matches nicely with Seattle's Chief Sealth symbol. Then there's the state seal, featuring George Washington (as depicted in a Gilbert Stuart portrait). Together, the three represent the continuity of the region's history over generations from the past to the present and into the future.

King's life similarly stretched across ethnic lines. County Council Chairman Larry Gossett said that before his death, King was working on behalf of all poor people: "He had been going to Indian reservations. He had been going to the mountains of Appalachia to talk to poor whites."

MLK County needs to manage the five-year transition to the new logo carefully to keep costs down. But the overdue change represents a broad, long-term consensus. In 1986, the County Council passed a motion saying the name would henceforth honor the famed pastor, rather than the slave-owning vice president, William Rufus DeVane King. By a big margin in the House and a 47-0 Senate vote, the Legislature changed the recognition of the name to honor King two years ago.

Gossett said, "For future generations, we will have a daily visual reminder of Dr. King -- a reminder of who he was, what he stood for and what we want the county we live in to strive to achieve." Fully achieving one's ideals is beyond any person (even such heroes as King, Sealth and Washington) or group. But just trying to live up to the logo's symbolism ought to make for a better MLK County.

On the Net: Buy official state seal items (really): secstate.wa.gov/seal